Becoming A Scholar

Academic learning happens through the implicit and explicit curricula. The explicit curriculum refers to learning that occurs through lectures, reading materials, assignments, and other formal teaching and learning activities. The implicit curriculum refers to informal socialization activities such as those that emphasize community building, such as student participation in governance and events, administrative procedures, and the sharing of values and norms (Bogo & Wayne, 2013). Implicit curriculum learning is facilitated through the culture of human exchange (CSWE, 2008) and is as valuable as all formal learning taking place in physical and virtual classrooms. The DSW program places great emphasis on the implicit curriculum, but particularly during your first year, learning through the implicit curriculum will help you shape your identity as a doctoral student. It is through quality human interactions between faculty, administrative staff, and peers that you will learn to think and act like a doctoral student across all areas of your educational journey. Part of this learning will be learning to think and to write like a scholar.

Becoming a scholar is not simply the product of earning a graduate degree; instead, it is rooted in the way we think about the complexities of the world around us. Scholarly thinking is a fundamental skill that requires higher-order critical thinking in academic endeavors. Whereas critical thinking requires the ability to analyze existing constructs and information, scholarly thinking also involves the creation of new knowledge and new perspectives on existing knowledge. Reneland-Forsman and Magnusson (2019) defined scholarly thinking as the ability to think critically at a meta-cognitive level about the construction of knowledge.